Hudson's Best Hard Apple Cider - How it Began

With Baby Steps

How Do You Make Hard Cider?

After my partner Christine approached me about starting a hard cider company at our son’s soccer game years ago, this was the question hanging in my head. I had worked with Christine at Pepsico many years ago before I resigned to pursue a passion. Wine. I spent time in Sonoma, Napa, and New Zealand making boutique wine from some of the most coveted varieties and vineyards in the world. But Apples? Where do I even start? I knew grapes. I knew wine. But I had never even HAD a hard cider. My brain was running circles. The primary acid in apples is malic acid….Oh no!!!!...a different acid!!!! Are apple skins as important as they are in wine? What’s the pH of apple juice!!!! Do apple varieties even matter? How quickly will it get me buzzed? Oh my. I had a lot to learn.

More Than a Buzz, New York Hard Apple Cider

In the interest of time...your time, I’m going to take an incredibly deep and fascinating subject and focus on my early experiments. Otherwise this blog is never going to end. We’ll come back and explore other avenues in future entries, but for now, let’s talk about beginnings. Those first tentative baby steps. With any new venture, it’s best to start simple. The first thing I did was to visit some local orchards here in apple country USA (New York) to find some juice. If you’ve never had fresh-pressed apple cider….in New York...in the Fall...I’m so very sorry for the deprivations you have endured. Your life is a hollow shell. Like a blown-out Easter egg my friend. I lugged a couple of my 5 gallon carboys (the vessels of delight) to an orchard and filled them with some fresh cider. But I had no idea what was in the blend or if this apple cider could even be transformed into potable hard cider. I chatted with the orchard manager a bit and he revealed that he and his family had been making hard cider for like...300 years. Apparently, if you grow things that contain sugar, you inevitably turn them into some form of alcohol. It goes with the territory and with man’s deepest desires for intoxication. He assured me that this was nothing new and that it would all work out. I left with a light heart and an intense desire to catch a buzz.

Old-school cidermaking. DIY at its best!

Rinse and Repeat

The second time I went to a different local orchard and got some more fresh-pressed juice. I still didn’t quite know specifically what was in it, other than about 20 varieties that were listed on the “Today’s cider is a blend of:” sign. I noticed that this orchard was treating the cider with ultraviolet light to reduce bacteria and yeast, an alternative to pasteurization. I asked if I could get some of the juice before it passed through the UV machine. No need to blast my juice with unnecessary energy. The alcohol would take care of any bacteria, and I was determined to make alcohol.

This time, things went better. I added some magical ingredients and chanted to Hanuman for days. It worked. After a couple of weeks, I had some bright, appley-smelling essence. It tasted pretty good but was flat and kinda anemic. I went old school and bottled the cider with some priming sugar to carbonate it. I used crown caps that had a little apple motif on them. How cute. I’m so clever.

1st Ingredient of Cider Making - Details

My first ground-floor fermentative experiment went fairly well. No...that’s a lie. It was bad. My basement stank like sewer gas for days when the fermentations got reductive. I was used to dealing with hydrogen sulfide issues, but this was BAD. FYI, hydrogen sulfide is a rotten egg-smelling gas that yeast produce when stressed. More on that in the future. There was little hope of rectifying the poop cider that I had made, so it went down the drain. Now, I was pissed. I had made some friggin’ amazing wines out west and down under. But here, with nature's apple nectar, grown in the very ground that I had been reared on myself, I made sewage. I would not rest until I could reduce my coordination and enhance my sense of well-being with my own fermented apple cider!

OK. At this point I realize that there are a lot of missing details here. I got some juice...blah, blah, blah...next thing you know, I have hard cider? Albeit, undrinkable hard cider, but yeah, like I said, we have other things to do in life. Get on with it Dan.

Aaaaw…how cute.

Shooting for Buzz’d, I Hit “Complex & Alluring”

After a few weeks, I had produced something fairly interesting - a fizzy, fruity, strangely wine-like delight. It was decent, but I didn’t feel that I had unlocked the deeper secrets of hard cider making just yet. However, as a committed perfectionist, I’m required to be my own worst critic. The cider was quite a hit with some of my family and friends. In fact, my wife’s uncle could not stop waxing poetic about it. He said it was like no other cider he had ever had; complex, alluring, and more than he thought hard cider was capable of being. Well, I may not have progressed to walking on the moon, but my first steps were complete. And....I was buzzed.

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